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GENDER and ALIENATION in Tim NOVELS OF ALONE TOGETiiER: GENDER AND ALIENATION in Tim NOVELS OF BARBARA PYM A Thesis Submitted to the College of Graduate Studies and Research in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon by Margaret Anne McDonald January, 1991 © The author claims copyright. Use shall not be made of the material contained herein without proper acknowledgment. i In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Postgraduate degree from the University of Saskatchewan, I agree that the Libraries of this University may make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permission for copying of this thesis in any manner, in whole or in part, for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor or professors who supervised my thesis work or, in their absence, by the Head of the Department or the Dean of the College in which my thesis work was done. It is understood that any copying or publication or use of this thesis or parts thereof for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. It is also understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to the University of Saskatchewan in any scholarly use which may be made of any material in my thesis. Requests for permission to copy or to make other use of material in this thesis in whole or part should be addressed to: Head of the Department of English University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N OWO ii Alone Together: Gender and Alienation in the Novels of Barbara Pym In Barbara Pym's distinctive fictional world, the designation of gender roles governs and regulates any and all activity. Closer examination suggests a less conventional interpretation, one that questions the patriarchal ordering inherent to the system. Though Pym may not accommodate the label of feminist novelist, her novels reveal the disparities attendant upon gender stereotyping. Barbara Pym is an inheritor of the tradition exemplified in the novels of Jane Austen, most notably in the utilization of the 11marriage plot''. Implicit within this fictional device is the promise of marriage at the close, the heroine's hard-won reward for good behaviour. Though Pym's deceptively reticent heroines may harbour some hope of this resolution, few trust the mythology that informs the marriage plot. In consequence, the novels rest on a seeming paradox. They are defined by the rules that govern the conventional romance, but committed to exposing their patent absurdity. Although Pym uses the marriage plot and does not advocate a radical reordering of society, she recognizes that both sexes are victimized by expectations reflected in the marriage plot and maintained through rigid social gradations. The early novels treat the subject of gender with Pym's distinctive blend of detached humour and irony. The later works, while maintaining this property, are tinged with a steadily darkening vision. In this context, the theme of community intrudes more insistently, to gain precedence in the final works. In them, Pym evokes a society increasingly estranged from itself and its past. In this alienated society, the 11excellent women" become the repositories and custodians of the custom and ceremony that typify Pym's unique world, and serve as a mediating influence between past, present, and future. Pym envisages iii a society more feminized than feminist, one that respects the challenge of difference as it is epitomized in gender, but recognizes that only community will ensure survival. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To my supervisor, Dr. J. K. Johnstone, I express my appreciation and my thanks. His infinite patience and unfailing good-humour, along with his wealth of experience, guided and sustained my efforts. For their valuable and welcome suggestions, I am grateful to the members of my advisory committee: Dr. R. L. Calder, Dr. R N. G. Marken, of the Department of English, Dr. C. A. Kent of the Department of History, and Dr. Charles Burkhart of Temple University. Dr. W. W. E. Slights proved a model of grace under pressure, for which my gratitude. In equal measure, I thank my husband, Ian McDonald, whose wit and objectivity earn him the accolade of "excellent man". My daughters' readiness to talk and to laugh provided still more support, as did my sons' sterner counsel. Here, as elsewhere, gender must out. Finally, my thanks are extended to the University of Saskatchewan, for their financial support. Both the teaching fellowships and the scholarships are acknowledged with gratitude. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v TABLE OF CONTENTS vi 1. GENDER AND COMMUNITY 1 2 EXCELLENT WOMEN IN THEIR WORLD 36 3. THE REAL WORLD 56 4 BEYOND THE ENCLOSURE 85 5. THE DARKENING VISION 108 6. SEASONED TIMBER 136 7 APOTHEOSIS OF THE EXCELLENT WOMAN 153 8 CONCLUSION 174 BIBLIOGRAPHY 183 vi Chapter 1 Gender and Community: " ... only connect'' Barbara Pym is a comic novelist with a serious subject. Conversely, she is a serious novelist writing in a comic mode. Humour suffuses everything she wrote, her "very private eye" selecting and shaping the "self-contained world" that Hazel Holt describes. 1 This self-containment distinguishes Pym's novelistic landscape. Images of confinement abound, some explicit and some less so; all contribute to the sense of enclosure and privacy that typifies her world. Structured in patriarchy, its fundamental ordering principle is gender designation. In its name, assiduously devised and maintained rules of social conduct govern and direct human behaviour. By definition, of course, patriarchy privileges the masculine, and subordinates the feminine, a ranking that finds little favour with feminist critics. To them, gender perpetuates male dominance, since ". it is generally true that gender is constructed in patriarchy to serve the interests of male supremacy''.2 Because gender designation regulates every aspect of Pym's world, a specific definition of this principle is needed. Robert J. Stoller examines the concept, stressing its essentially social and cultural implications: Gender is a term that has psychological or cultural rather than biological connotations. If the proper terms for sex are "male" and "female", the corresponding terms for gender are "masculine" and "feminine"; these latter may be quite independent of (biological) [sic] sex. Gender role is the overt behavior one [sic] displays in society, the role which he plays especially with other people, to establish his position with them insofar as his and their evaluation of his gender is concemed.3 The resulting hierarchy separates, when it does not isolate, men from women, age from youth, and race from race. Yet in this arrangement Pym glimpses an underlying fallacy. However the system favours "the interests of male supremacy'', and she is in no doubt that it does, privilege exacts a price. Although the existing order may work to male advantage, its expectations and demands imprison and isolate men as well as women within its fetters. Barbara Pym's comic vision originates in this perception; the recurring motif of confinement becomes its dominant expression. Pym's ironic humour neither denies nor diminishes her characters. However bemused she is at male gullibility and its seemingly limitless dimensions, she rarely descends to ridicule. In Pym's world, the feminine principle prevails; a keen appreciation of the patriarchal system's essential absurdity maintains this control. But beneath the laughter lurks the recognition that the structure's foundation has serious flaws, frailties that afflict everyone who shelters beneath its protection. Although Pym never advocates any reordering of the system, she does suggest that its artificially maintained barriers discourage human communication, and deny that, for men and women alike, human existence is ephemeral and solitary. As Piers Longridge, the aimless hero of A Glass of Blessings, says in self-justification,"... aren't we all colleagues, in a sense, in this grim business of getting through life as best we can?"4 Piers' homosexuality may exile him to a territory even more peripheral than the traditional preserve of the excellent woman, but his gloomy assessment originates in an exclusion rivalling that imposed upon women by a patriarchal order. Like Piers, the excellent woman maintains a separation from the dominant culture, although her isolation is neither so complete nor so despairing. 2 Although Pym's discerning protagonists understand that such divisions promote and sustain illusory patterns of social organization and behaviour, they honour them all the same. By this subterfuge, the excellent woman exercises a modicum of independence. Relegated to a marginal position, she scrutinizes the passing scene, takes note of its absurdities, and keeps her own counsel. Ironically, her somewhat invidious position allows her some flexibility in managing her life. In a limited way, in her limited world, the excellent woman retains a measure of autonomy, one she guards jealously. Pym's characters operate within a confined and confining space, but this enclosure does not spare them the vicissitudes common to every life. Yet her heroines are rarely victims of their often unenviable circumstances. In Less Than Angels , Pym's fourth published novel, Catherine Oliphant speaks for her creator when she observes that, "[l]ife is comic and sad and indefinite- dull, sometimes, but seldom really tragic or deliriously happy, except when one's very young.''5 As a writer of romance fiction, Catherine understands the appeal of illusion over reality. In this context, illusion can be defined as life as it should be, and reality life as it is. In Pym's world, illusion is romantic love, while the exigencies imposed by gender designation are its reality. To distinguish between the two demands honesty, courage, and perhaps most of all, humour. Pym's excellent woman has all three attributes. Together, these qualities sustain the heightened consciousness that identifies her. Viewed through her eyes, the familiar scene takes on a strange and hitherto unremarked structure.
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